This article is not about where marketing agencies have failed us in the past or how they even continue to do so now. Every business owner has a story of being sold down the river in one way or another, but this is not the focus. I want to look forward, to take stock of a changing world and industry to see what works better, to see how my clients, and yours, can benefit from a more flexible approach by using Digital Marketing Consultants.

I’m not a fan of using buzzwords like ‘disruption’, but disruption in the digital marketing industry is exactly what I want to talk about here.

Agencies, no matter their size, ambition, dynamism, or any of the other words they love using to describe themselves, have to contend with certain ways of doing things to ensure their growth, survival, or the simple ability to pay their bills.

They must prioritise certain clients, have to apply more creativity to some and template their work on others. A business with 50 employees and over 200 clients simply cannot do things any other way.

The more competitive their pricing, the more this conundrum shines through, and the more the quality of their campaigns suffers.

As time moves on, marketing customers expect more, trust a little less, and want results at less of a cost and in less time. This makes the agency model a little less practical by the day, and the time is coming where a viable replacement is needed.

This is where a consulting model, one that is far more pro-consumer, comes in.

THE GRADUAL SHIFT TO CONSULTANCIES

You might roll your eyes at the term ‘digital marketing consultant’, an agent by any other name is still an agent, right?

Not necessarily. The approach varies and makes all the difference. Let’s look more closely at how:

MOVE PAST THE DIGITAL FACTORY

Any agency, almost without fail, has to default to a state of churning out uninspired, serviceable, but ultimately templated marketing campaigns.

They simply don’t have the time nor resources to give each client an approach that is tailored to their business, budget, and marketing goals. They have to keep their heads above a sea of constantly incoming work just to stay alive.

It doesn’t matter how many times they use the word ‘bespoke’ on their website, they can only give that to you to a certain degree before they simply can’t keep up with what’s on their plate.

I’ve come to call this the Digital Factory, something that my time spent in agencies has acquainted me with. Ticking off items on my to-do list until they are all done, and I can wear my burn out like a badge of honour, in a way that agents tend to do proudly while their clients are stuck revelling in averageness.

Consulting, by its very nature, avoids this at all costs. Collections of clients are smaller, more personal, and are developed through building a relationship of trust and mutual understanding.

It is about proving your professionalism and experience time and time again, making space and time to treat each client as though their business was your own and you are personally responsible for their success and growth.

Consulting is about knowing a client’s business intimately enough to give it the kind of personal attention that an agent cannot do while juggling hundreds of others.

A PERSON -NOT A TEAM- IS ACCOUNTABLE

A consultant may utilise a network of professionals and contacts that they trust to get the job done, in many more cases a consultant will handle things personally. In all cases, the consultant themselves accepts accountability for results.

Dealing with agencies is often different. Client Services (even when called something else) is just the smile at the front. Then there is the salesperson who you might only see when an opportunity for an upsell comes along.

They will both tell you about how some-task-or-another has been handled by an obscure and faceless team that you can only imagine as a concept; how the ball has been dropped by a John or Jane Doe who may or may not even exist as far as you’re concerned.

Worse still, they may hook you in with promises of one of the best teams in the industry, and then pawn your campaign off on to their interns.

The point is that there is very limited accountability at best in an agency. A consultant, the name and face of your marketing approach, is always accountable. Their professional reputation is at stake, and they will do their best to keep it in the green.

CLEAR CUT COMMUNICATION… IF YOU WANT IT

Insights into the messy structure of teams detailed above brings up another concern, one that every agency suffers from to some degree, that of communication, both internally and with clients.

Too often I have seen entire projects fall apart in agencies simply because something got lost in translation, someone forgot to mention something, or didn’t get the memo.

Separate teams of graphic artists, web builders, SEO experts, client liaisons, salespeople, and managers all communicating the needs of hundreds of clients as cohesively as they can, often making mistakes because communication gets complicated as they scale up.

Digital marketing consultants do things differently: Teams are structured to be small and intimate. The idea is simplification and cohesion. Personnel are selected based on track-record, existing relationships, and skill, not value for money.

Then there is the issue of external communication, getting the client on the same page as you.

How many templated, barely informative reports about ad spend and performance have you had to go through on your own? How many times have you told your agency that you only want to hear about results, but had to sit through an hour-long lecture filled with abbreviations you don’t fully understand?

Consultants communicate on your terms but prefer to keep you as much in the loop as possible. It’s your money, your business, your marketing campaign.

BUYER’S REMORSE IS A FADING CONCEPT

I wanted to put this one higher up on the list, because I think it addresses a cardinal sin that the digital marketing agency model has simply gotten away with for far too long… Contracts.

But ‘contracts’ is an ugly word, so here it sits at the bottom of this article where only the brave readers (like you) who have made it to the end, will find it.

I dislike contracts, and I think they open too many opportunities for substandard work and ultimately, buyers’ remorse.

During my time in an agency environment, contracts were a persistent sore point for clients, almost after the very moment they signed one. Being locked into a 12-month contract for a service that costs more than it makes is never a nice feeling; and does nothing for trust.

While consultants and contracts are not exactly exclusive from each other, consultants do have the flexibility to prefer not using them.

Fewer running expenses, and a more personalised approach to services, means building a relationship with clients where the value speaks more volumes and keeps people retained far better than any contract would.

Personal and professional relationships are built on trust and transparency, results and quality become the yardsticks by which a consultant measures the strength and success of these relationships, not binding terms and conditions.

CONTACT BARK CONSULTING FOR DETAILS

I could go on about the benefits of this ‘disruption’, but at over a thousand words this article has probably kept your interest for about as long as it should. It is galvanising to see how the industry is changing, professionals with serious experience in the meat-grinder marketing factories are branching out an improving how their skills translate to what clients really want.

Find out more about how your business can take advantage of this changing landscape, work directly alongside personal digital marketing consultants that give your business the personal attention it deserves. Visit the Bark Consulting website for details.